


feng shui

by kwritten



Series: Finding a Balance [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/F, Female Friendship, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 18:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3540320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>summary: tara comes over to the summers home and finds dawn in the midst of an interior decorating project gone horribly awry<br/>a/n: heavy discussion of tara's relationship to her inner-demon; everyone having Key-angst but dawn; and featuring a conversation between tara and joyce about supernatural parenting</p>
            </blockquote>





	feng shui

Sometime in the middle of her freshman year, Dawn got it into her head to rearrange her room. It was only about five weeks after what they were all calling ‘the incident with the monk’ and they were all struggling with how exactly to deal with the fact of Dawn.  
  
Except Buffy and Joyce. There was no adjustment period for them; just a new certain softness that would suddenly come upon them when she broke something or started babbling on about something Janice had said. She was  _theirs_  in a suddenly new and complete way and they stepped into that new world as a matter of course.  
  
Anya was still calling her ‘little girl’ and Sunggyu had had to stop her from bowing on more than one occasion. Sam had refused to deal with any of this and had left to go demon hunting in South America for a couple weeks. (She would come back with new scars and new stories she’d refuse to tell and presents for everyone and it would all be right as rain once again.)  
  
Tara was torn between being too kind and getting tongue twisted. She and Dawn had always been closer than the others, in spite of everything Tara missed her family and though she didn’t want to be one of those girls who takes over her girlfriend’s family as her own, it was easy with Dawn. Or at least it had been.  
  
On the day in question, Tara came over to the Summers house after her shift at the campus bookstore to see if Buffy needed any help moving more of her stuff out of the dorms. The decision to leave the dorms and move back home had seemed like the best thing to do under the circumstances. Joyce was still not up to full speed after her stint in the hospital and Dawn was… well. She found Joyce and Olivia giggling over something in the kitchen, cups of fresh coffee in their hands. It had been a while since she’d heard Joyce laugh like that, so she slipped by before they noticed her lurking in the hallway.  
  
Olivia had come back to Sunnydale when she heard about Joyce, stayed in the hospital with her, and had done her best to help out with Dawn as well. Tara hadn’t stopped to think about what Olivia had left behind in London to come here, but she also didn’t want to know. Olivia’s decision to go back home permanently just before Adam last year had been a serious blow to everyone, even if it was clear she needed some space from Giles.  
  
Tara smiled to herself on the way up the stairs, glad to hear Joyce laughing in the kitchen, happy to feel as though some peace and balance had seemed to descend over the Summers’ home finally.  
  
Dawn’s bedroom door was flung open – which was strange enough, the teenager had in the last week or so become overcome with privacy concerns – and the inner contents seemed to be spilling out into the hallway. Tara stopped and considered. Did she investigate? Did she leave this sudden pile of articles in the hallway to someone else and curl up with Buffy (who was probably napping or could be convinced to nap, it was Sunday afternoon anyway)?  
  
A sudden crash and a whimper from Dawn made up her mind and she not-so-carefully stepped around the pile of  _things_  to peer into the room.  
  
“Dawnie?”  
  
The room was … a nightmare. The bed was pushed vertically against the window, the entire contents of the closet seemed to be sprinkled across the floor, the desk was blocking the doorway, and Dawn appeared to be pinned under the heavy dresser.  
  
An arm waved up from behind said dresser, “Hey Tara! What’s up?”  
  
“Um…” Tara shifted and looked longingly towards the closed door behind which was her super-strong girlfriend and the end to her personal responsibility, “Do you want me to get Buffy?”  
  
“NO!”  
  
“Cause it’s just that if I wanted to move a dresser and I had a sister with superhuman strength I’d like… probably just leave the interior decorating to her.”  
  
There was a long silence. No one in the Summers house was immediately concerned about the loud thump that had come from Dawn’s room. Presumably because it wasn’t at all a rare occurrence.  
  
“Please don’t get Buffy?” Dawn’s voice was small and a little broken, muffled in a way that had nothing whatsoever to do with her being buried under her possessions.  
  
Tara surveyed the desk in front of her. She had to get into the room and save Dawn from the pesky set of drawers and the immediate problem was obviously: over, under, or attempt to move the blockage? She sighed and put her purse on the desk, left her shoes in the hall, before crawling under it and making her way to Dawn.  
  
She was sitting curled up behind the dresser, her hair pulled up in a messy bun, and looking not at all as stuck or in mortal peril as Tara had previously imagined.  
  
“Are you stuck or just mad?”  
  
Dawn looked up at her and smiled ruefully, “Mostly just mad.”  
  
Tara eyed the dresser and Dawn’s position before crawling over the obstacle and sitting down next to the teary-eyed teen. “I feel a bit like I just wandered into Wonderland.”  
  
“I’m a bit mad, aren’t I?”  
  
“All the best people are a bit mad.”  
  
Dawn leaned into Tara’s side and sighed, “Nothing seems to  _fit_  anymore. And I tried to move it all around, but that only made it worse.”  
  
Tara’s heart clenched.  
  
She was not prepared for this conversation. Not even a little bit, not even at all.  
  
“What was the plan?”  
  
Dawn laughed, “Well first I just wanted to arrange my clothes by color – you know, so everything is easier to find. But then I thought maybe everything would be easier if the dresser was inside the closet. But to do that I had to move the desk and then I thought wouldn’t the bed look nice under the window and then you came in.”  
  
Tara nodded solemnly, “Let’s just do this one step at a time, okay? Sounds like you tried to change everything all at once and now you’re hiding in a corner.”  
  
“Pretty stupid, huh?”  
  
“Nah – one time my mom and I decided to change the living room. We moved it a thousand times it felt like and when we finally got it the way we liked it and were lying there, sweaty and laughing, my … dad came home and he said it looked the same.”  
  
Dawn snorted, “Guys do not understand Feng Shui.”  
  
“No, they really don’t.” Tara giggled, “But also a week later we were looking at some old Christmas pictures and realized he was right. We had moved everything around – back into the same position it had already been in.”  
  
“No way!”  
  
“Way.”  
  
Dawn dissolved into giggles that turned into soft, gasping sobs. Tara held her close and stroked her hair, leaning her cheek onto her head and wishing there was some way to make whatever was wrong right again.  
  
“Tara?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Is it supposed to feel like this?”  
  
“Is what supposed to feel like what?”  
  
“Like… everything is out of place and nothing fits!”  
  
Tara looked around the room – or at what she could see of it. “Well I mean, everything fit before. I’m sure we can make it all fit again.”  
  
“Yeah…” Dawn sniffed. “But will I fit?”  
  
Tara stammered.  
  
“Like we’re getting all these speeches at school about puberty and  _changes_  and it all sounds like bullshit. But what do I know? Buffy didn’t go through puberty, she went from being a girl to being a Slayer and I’m pretty sure that’s not what anyone means when they say ‘changes’ like that. So why do I feel like… like my parts were all designed wrong and nothing is where it’s supposed to be?”  
  
Tara squeezed Dawn closer to her, “I think… I think everyone feels like that sometimes. It’s not puberty Dawn, that’s just… being human.”  
  
“Being human means feeling  _wrong_  all the time?”  
  
Tara pursed her lips, “No I think. I think being human means maybe sometimes you don’t fit and sometimes you do and you just have to take it one step at a time.”  
  
“Like how you thought maybe you were a demon your whole life and now you’re just a regular old human like the rest of us kind of? Cause that must have been like…  _so weird_.”  
  
“The weirdest.”  
  
Dawn shuddered, “I hope—”  
  
Tara cut her off quickly, “I know what to do. Just wait here.”  
  
(She knew what was coming. She knew  _I hope I never have to go through something like that_  was just about to come spilling out of Dawn’s lips. Just like she knew that it was only a matter of time before it did, before everything she was got thrown into question. And that was painful. It was being something one minute and being something else the next and not knowing how to  _be_  anymore.  
  
Kinda like being a girl one minute and a Slayer the next.  
Or being a girl one minute and a Watcher the next and then choosing to be something in between.  
Or being a demon one minute and a girl the next.  
Or being a girl the whole time, but never knowing it really.  
  
Between Buffy, Anya, Sam, and Tara – they’d all been told by the world what and how to be. None of them was really ready to help Dawn learn all the things she was about to learn about herself. But if there was anyone else in the world who could understand more than them, Tara would be surprised.)  
  
She catapulted across the room, choosing to crawl back under the desk (you have to exit Wonderland the same way you enter). In the (empty) kitchen she grabbed a box of Oreos and a jar of peanut butter and read the note Joyce had left on the fridge (“gone to get food! Be back soon! XO”) before darting back up the stairs.  
  
Dawn was still hiding in her corner.  
  
“Sugar and protein and then we take this one step at a time, together. Okay?”  
  
Dawn brightened and grabbed the jar of peanut butter from her, “Deal!”  
  
They giggled over their snacks and talked about school and clothes and that squishy demon that tried to teach Dawn’s science class last week and moved the dresser into the closet – which was a success. And then arranged all her clothes by color (Tara managing to persuade Dawn into making a ‘donate’ pile for the things she had outgrown) (it became the biggest pile in the room which Tara didn’t know how to feel about exactly). The bed went back to its original spot, but the desk was moved to a more convenient location.  
  
When they were nearly finished, Tara carefully re-shelving the books alphabetically by author, Joyce popped her head in to tell them it was time for dinner.  
  
“You move things around a little today?”  
  
Dawn surveyed the room, “Yeah. I fit better this way I think.”  
  
Tara met Joyce’s eye and they both silently took in the room and the very young girl standing in the middle of it, struggling to find a place in the world for her body and for her feelings, feeling adrift even in her own room.  
  
“You’re growing up so fast.”  
  
“Mom. Don’t get emotional. It’s just furniture.”  
  
Buffy suddenly appeared, throwing her arm around her mother’s shoulders and pointing at the garbage bag full of clothes next to the door, “What’s that?”  
  
“Oh just some stuff to donate. Things I don’t wear anymore.”  
  
Buffy looked over at Tara, “That was your idea, wasn’t it?”  
  
Tara shrugged, “It’s always nice to schluff off things in your wardrobe and get new stuff.”  
  
“New stuff?” Dawn’s eyes gleamed.  
  
“Sure, how about next weekend we go shopping?”  
  
Joyce smiled, “That sounds nice. Let’s all go!”  
  
The girls looked over at her.  
  
“Oh come on. I’m a mom but I still need clothes. And I could use a new outfit or two.” She hesitated, “Or is it totally lame to go shopping with your mom on a weekend?”  
  
“Depends…” Buffy seriously considered her mother. “What’s for dinner?”  
  
Just then Olivia’s voice came from downstairs, “Are you coming or do I have to eat all this Greek takeout by myself? Because I will!”  
  
Buffy placed a loud smacking kiss on Joyce’s cheek, “I call dibs on everything.” She grinned and then ran out of the room.”  
  
“Hey! Food isn’t a car! You can’t just call shotgun on  _everything_ ,” Dawn called as she sprinted after her.  
  
Joyce laughed a little, softly.  
  
Tara turned back to finish putting the books on the shelf before joining everyone downstairs. She should probably think of a reason to leave without eating, not wanting to impose.  
  
When she was finished, she was surprised to find Joyce still in the room, sitting on Dawn’s bed and holding an old stuffed animal.  
  
“Joyce?” Tara sat down next to her. “You okay?”  
  
“Thank you for helping Dawn today.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“She looks up to you, you know.”  
  
Tara shook her head, “The only person Dawn sees is Buffy.”  
  
Joyce’s eyes clouded a bit, as if she was looking out at something Tara couldn’t see, “Yes I think that used to be true. But I think, the older we get the more heroes we need.”  
  
Tara nodded.  
  
“I’m so worried that I won’t know how… how to help her understand what she is. She’s mine and she’s not. How do you explain that to a fourteen year old girl?”  
  
Tara cleared her throat awkwardly, “I think you do what you can and hope for the best.”  
  
“I don’t want her to ever feel like… like she isn’t as real as I know she is in my heart.”  
  
Tara instinctively reached out and held the other woman’s hand, “My mom… she did her best to try not to make me feel different because of … you know, the whole demon thing. But I  _was_  different. Or we all thought I was.”  
  
“So I should… treat her differently?”  
  
“I think there’s no right or wrong way to tell a kid she’s not really as real as she thought she was. Or maybe she is but not under the same terms as everyone else. So I think… wait for her to tell you what she needs. Even if it takes her a while to figure that out.”  
  
Joyce squeezed Tara’s hand, “I’m so glad my daughter met you.”  
  
Tara willed the tears behind her eyes not to fall, “You and me both.”  
  
They sat for a minute, holding hands, in Dawn’s ‘new’ room, each lost in their own thoughts of mothers and daughters.  
  
Tara thought of her mother, so ill and yet so powerful, so downtrodden towards the end. So afraid of herself and afraid for her daughter. In hindsight, especially knowing now that she wasn’t really a demon despite it all, Tara could pick out a great many flaws in her mother’s parenting. Flaws that were so terribly  _human_  and so utterly sad. This woman who thought she had passed on the curse of being a demon to her daughter that she loved so much, who died believing that she was a monster.  
  
Sometimes knowing the truth felt like freedom, and other times  _not_  being a monster felt like the greater sacrifice.  
  
She wondered – not for the first time – what the truth would feel like to Dawn once she learned it.  
  
Would it feel like a prison or like a release?  
  
Joyce stood up and pulled Tara up with her, “Now let’s get downstairs before the others eat everything. And don’t you dare try to come up with a fake reason to leave.”  
  
So they walked downstairs hand-in-hand.  
  
And Tara felt a little less tired than she had before she had come – but also as though she had aged a thousand years sitting in that room where a teenage girl was struggling to learn how to exist, even though every memory in her mind told her she should already know how.


End file.
